August 2010

08/31/2010

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

- Mother Teresa

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

Riding the rapids

IN THE GRAND CANYON— "How do you teach about evolution and creation?" That's one of the questions thoughtful parents most frequently ask when visiting Christian colleges with their high-school students.

Some colleges give straightforward answers that might startle some Christians. The biology department of Calvin College in Michigan issued a statement on May 7: "We teach evolutionary theory as the best scientific explanation for the dynamic diversity of life on Earth. . . . We teach biology from an evolutionary paradigm."

Across the border in Ohio, Cedarville University has an equally forthright statement from the other end of the spectrum: "We believe in the literal six-day account of creation, that the creation of man lies in the special, immediate, and formative acts of God and not from previously existing forms of life."

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

08/30/2010

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

Why Should I Believe My Belief?

Peter had stopped by to ask what I would be teaching the next semester. None of my planned courses fit his schedule (which didn't seem to surprise him), so he seemed to be ready to leave.

But he didn't. Each time he stood up, he thought of some trivial question, then sat down again to ask it. I began to think he'd get leg cramps if he kept this up.

"Why don't you tell me what's really on your mind?"

"What do you mean? I wanted to know what you were teaching next semester, and — "

"But you knew that already. And you didn't really come here to ask about the Semester in Uzbekistan, or the Internship in Antinomianism."

"What are you, psychic or something?"

I grinned. "Yes."

"Well," he said, "there is something I've been wondering about. It's not why I'm here. But since you bring it up, I guess I might as well tell you."

"You might as well," I agreed.

"I was talking with my friend Don. You know him."

"Sure. It's through him that I know you."

"Well, the other day he asked whether I believe in God, and I didn't know what to tell him."

"You don't know whether God is real?"

"It's not that. I don't know whether I believe in Him."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"No. See, I do believe in God. But I don't see why my belief should be true. So maybe I don't believe in Him, if you see what I mean."

"Maybe you're trying to say that your belief doesn't reflect real knowledge, so even though you believe in God, you also think maybe you shouldn't. Am I getting warm?

"Yeah, that's it. See, one of my other professors said that the only reason I believe in God is that I've been brought up that way. If I'd been brought up by pagans, probably I'd believe in lots of gods. If I'd been brought up by atheists, probably I wouldn't believe in any god. So I have this belief — but so what?"

I reached for my coffee. "Peter, tell me something."

"What?"

"What makes you sure that you believe in God only because you've been brought up that way?"

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

It’s Music Monday once again here at The Poached Egg! Many of you may have already seen the video below as it has been around a few years and has made the rounds. But, if you haven’t seen it yet, you’re in for a treat as it is hilarious (at least it is to me). If you’ve seen it already, watch it again and enjoy. Be sure to share with your friends! "I like big bibles and I cannot lie..."

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

08/29/2010

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.

Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, LORD, preserve both people and animals.

How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Psalm 36: 5-7

Christians today are facing more challenges than ever. The Poached Egg exists to equip Christians to meet those challenges and be more confident in their faith and become more effective witnesses for Christ. If you find these articles and posts useful, please consider partnering with me in 2018 to continue this work that God has laid on my heart. As someone once said, the Gospel is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing. You can become a monthly partner for just as little as $5 a month (that’s only $60 a year), the price of a gourmet cup of coffee. Special one time gifts are welcome and encouraged as well. Will you help?

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

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For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 2 Peter 1:16